French Clock TV

Considered a pioneer of video art, Nam June Paik produced various video sculptures that transformed TV sets into a medium of art by distorting their usual functions of entertainment and information. First, he manipulated and distorted the images on television screens, but by 1965, he became one of the first artists to experiment with the medium of video.
“French Clock TV” is a video sculpture dealing with the perception and measurement of time. It is composed of three TVs, a wall clock and a closed-circuit camera. The clock is hung on the wall, in the 12 o’clock position. Three TVs are installed around it at the respective coordinates of 3, 6, and 9 o’clock. Time is ticking away and the pendulum motion is live-fed into the TVs on the wall around the clock. Through the work, time becomes fragmented, fractured and materialised into its constitutive pieces. With this technological intervention, Paik transforms temporality into a sculptural video object.

"What Time Is It?", exhibition view, Arter, 2019.